Meta announced on May 5 new updates to its age assurance technology aimed at ensuring teens have safe and appropriate experiences on its platforms. The company detailed enhancements in detecting underage accounts, expanded protections for teens suspected of misrepresenting their age, and additional resources for parents.
The topic is important as online safety for young people remains a concern among families, regulators, and technology companies. Meta said it wants young people to have positive experiences online by placing them in default settings designed for their age group.
According to the announcement, Meta has used tools and features over the past decade to help protect teens on Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger. This includes Teen Accounts with built-in safeguards that limit who can contact minors and what content they see. The company also automatically places all users under 18 into a restricted content setting.
Meta said it is investing heavily in advanced artificial intelligence technologies to better determine user ages. These systems analyze contextual clues such as birthday celebrations or mentions of school grades across posts, comments, bios, captions, Reels, Live videos, and Groups. If an account appears likely to belong to someone underage based on these signals or visual analysis—such as general physical characteristics but not facial recognition—the account will be deactivated until proof of age is provided through verification processes.
The company reported that these improvements are being rolled out globally but certain features like visual analysis are currently available only in select countries while broader deployment continues. Meta also said it is making it easier for users to report underage accounts through simplified reporting flows both within the app and via its Help Center. Artificial intelligence models now supplement human review teams when handling these reports.
In addition to detection efforts, Meta is expanding its proactive enrollment of suspected teen accounts into Teen Account protections beyond the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom—to now include 27 European Union countries and Brazil on Instagram—and soon Facebook in the US followed by other regions later this year.
To support parents further this month in the US on Facebook and Instagram apps specifically—notifications will provide information about confirming their teens’ ages along with tips for constructive conversations about providing accurate birthdates online. Globally accessible resources remain available through Meta’s Family Center platform.
Looking ahead at policy solutions beyond technology alone: “We believe legislation should require app stores to verify age and provide apps and developers with this information so that they can provide age-appropriate experiences,” Meta said.
